A primary school teacher in China was recently dismissed for discriminating against a child suffering from cancer, by making him sit alone at the back of the class and not allowing him to take exams like everyone else.

The languages teacher is said to have complained about the boy ever since he transferred to the Liancheng Primary School, in Quanzhou, Fujian province, in September, in order to be closer to his parents while receiving chemotherapy treatment for Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. He reportedly thought that the child’s condition could be contagious, and he wasn’t the only one, as Chinese media reports that several children were withdrawn from the school following the sick 13-year-old’s transfer. Since then, he had gone out of his way to make the boy, named only as Zhou feel like an outcast, making him sit all by himself at the back of the class and even forbidding him to take exams.

At first, Zhou kept the traumatic discrimination he was being subjected to at school a secret from his parents, as he didn’t want them to worry about him, but after coming home without a mark for a midterm languages examination, his father started asking questions, so he had no choice but to tell him the truth. The student said the teacher, also surnamed Zhou, had isolated him to the back of the class to prevent his sickness from spreading to the other children, and did not allow him to take part in exams. He had already missed three exams because of this.

“My son just sat there for 45 minutes during the exams,” Zhou’s father told Chinese reporters. “What must he have been thinking? How sad must he have been?”

It’s unclear whether Zhou Snr. confronted the languages teacher himself or went straight to the school’s headmaster, but we do know that the languages teacher was recently put on administrative leave and suspended as vice-principal of the school. After learning about the unfair treatment of the student, the Hui’an County Education Bureau started an investigation and demanded that Zhou be allowed to sit and take exams with the rest of his class.

The boy’s father also made Zhou’s plight known on social media, posting photos and videos of him isolated from his classmates. They quickly went viral attracting even more media attention to this story.

“Not only does the teacher not have any common sense, he does not have the tiniest bit of empathy,” one Weibo user wrote. “He is not fit to be a teacher.”

“Poor boy. After going through the hardships of cancer and chemotherapy, he ended up being discriminated against. How sad must he had felt!”

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not contagious, and the funny thing is that Zhou had already been given a clean bill of health by his doctor after undergoing chemotherapy.